"Impostor" sets up an intriguing premise that suggests McCarthyism taken to the next level, and then spends the next ninety minutes avoiding it by slogging through tunnels. It's the kind of movie where every money shot is seen from a wide angle as a spaceship lands, but the characters exist wander through sets built by the lowest bidder.
The year is 2079, and Earth has been at war with an alien race for the last 29 years. Gary Sinese plays Dr. Spencer Olam, a brilliant engineer who has spent his career developing weapons to fight the aliens. Olam is happily married to a successful doctor (Madeline Stow) and is about to launch a new weapon against the enemy.
The aliens cannot attack the remaining human cities directly due to shield technology that protects them. Now they've hit upon a clever strategy: kill a prominent citizen, replicate him down to the exact detail, and send him into the populace with a immensely powerful bomb hidden in his chest. These replicants are pretty well done. They contain all the subject's memories, knowledge, fingerprints and even DNA. "The only thing lacking is a soul," intones one character in an unusually metaphysical statement for this movie. The replicant is not even aware that he isn't who he appears to be.
Dr. Olam is believed to be one of these replicants. He was on an alien "hit list" of targets to be replaced. But was he? He is arrested, but insists that he is still himself. His accuser, a security chief named Hathaway, is sure he is not. So sure, he'd like to just skip ahead to the vivisectioning without any further investigation. Olam escapes. He wants to get to his wife's hospital so a crucial test can prove conclusively there isn't a bomb in his rib cage.
The movie then sets up a series of scenes in which Olam runs around in a maze of crumbling buildings and tunnels in order to avoid the authorities. There are precious other characters to be concerned with, but he does run into a forgotten community of dwellers who are stuck outside the system, relying on survival tactics. They don't amount to much except for one who guides him through the tunnels, but he isn't given much to do.
The technology in the movie is enough to cause engineers nightmares. Humanity has accomplished space travel and highly advanced weaponry but still uses old-fashioned bullets to shoot their own kind. Small devices planted next to the spinal cord are used to identify citizens as they pass security points, but when Olam has his removed, he is able to carry it around and not set off the sensors in one scene, but later is able to use it as a decoy merely by slipping it into another's pocket. The real kicker is the DNA scanner that he needs to fool to unlock a door at the hospital. Only the right DNA will work, so where does he get it? From a surgical glove in a wastebin right beneath the scanner! The people who thought this up are probably the descendents of the team that developed the copywrited CD technology that can be foiled by a magic marker.
"Imposter" is based on a Philip K. Dick story, and could have been at least mildly interesting if it didn't wander aimlessly so much through it's low-rent production. It does contain a twist at the end that while easily guessed, doesn't cheat. But getting there is like peddling your bicycle to the moon.
The year is 2079, and Earth has been at war with an alien race for the last 29 years. Gary Sinese plays Dr. Spencer Olam, a brilliant engineer who has spent his career developing weapons to fight the aliens. Olam is happily married to a successful doctor (Madeline Stow) and is about to launch a new weapon against the enemy.
The aliens cannot attack the remaining human cities directly due to shield technology that protects them. Now they've hit upon a clever strategy: kill a prominent citizen, replicate him down to the exact detail, and send him into the populace with a immensely powerful bomb hidden in his chest. These replicants are pretty well done. They contain all the subject's memories, knowledge, fingerprints and even DNA. "The only thing lacking is a soul," intones one character in an unusually metaphysical statement for this movie. The replicant is not even aware that he isn't who he appears to be.
Dr. Olam is believed to be one of these replicants. He was on an alien "hit list" of targets to be replaced. But was he? He is arrested, but insists that he is still himself. His accuser, a security chief named Hathaway, is sure he is not. So sure, he'd like to just skip ahead to the vivisectioning without any further investigation. Olam escapes. He wants to get to his wife's hospital so a crucial test can prove conclusively there isn't a bomb in his rib cage.
The movie then sets up a series of scenes in which Olam runs around in a maze of crumbling buildings and tunnels in order to avoid the authorities. There are precious other characters to be concerned with, but he does run into a forgotten community of dwellers who are stuck outside the system, relying on survival tactics. They don't amount to much except for one who guides him through the tunnels, but he isn't given much to do.
The technology in the movie is enough to cause engineers nightmares. Humanity has accomplished space travel and highly advanced weaponry but still uses old-fashioned bullets to shoot their own kind. Small devices planted next to the spinal cord are used to identify citizens as they pass security points, but when Olam has his removed, he is able to carry it around and not set off the sensors in one scene, but later is able to use it as a decoy merely by slipping it into another's pocket. The real kicker is the DNA scanner that he needs to fool to unlock a door at the hospital. Only the right DNA will work, so where does he get it? From a surgical glove in a wastebin right beneath the scanner! The people who thought this up are probably the descendents of the team that developed the copywrited CD technology that can be foiled by a magic marker.
"Imposter" is based on a Philip K. Dick story, and could have been at least mildly interesting if it didn't wander aimlessly so much through it's low-rent production. It does contain a twist at the end that while easily guessed, doesn't cheat. But getting there is like peddling your bicycle to the moon.